


like real people do

by driedvoices



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, gettin' it on in sentient forests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 06:37:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4554510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driedvoices/pseuds/driedvoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a dangerous game they play together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like real people do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Iki_teru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iki_teru/gifts).



It's a dangerous game they play together.

Cabeswater is neutral territory, which is something sentient dream forests don't often get the chance to be; more neutral than the cavalcade of half-shouted conversations that always seemed to take place outside Blue's door, than Ronan's raucous, metallic laughter and Noah, always sudden and very close, pretending to breathe.

In the dream nothing echoes. In the dream no one can see you wanting.

It starts with this: Blue's fingers, feather-light on Gansey's wrist, fingernails dragging while they lay back in the wake of the shifting clouds. For some reason, when they're here alone, together, it always looks about to storm.

"Jane," Gansey says, practiced and even, too even for his tight breathing. Her thumbnail slips and scrapes the swell of his palm before idling back again. Gansey swallows, changing tact. "I think we should take a trip, all of us. Go to the beach."

"Virginia Beach, in August? Not on your life," Blue, eyebrow raised, makes the threat idly, as though she didn't know his life was condensed and held before her in the tiny space between them, as though she didn't pull on his lungs with every pass of her fingertips over his pulse.

"It's not crowded everywhere. I know a place."

"You own a place."

"There's a boat," Gansey offers.

Blue rolls to her side, props her head up on her elbow. "Golly gee, Dick, are you going to take us all for a ride on the S.S. Ostentatious Right-Wing Circle Jerk?"

There is a noticeable wince. "It's actually called the Intrepid."

Her lips are pursed as she studies him. "That really shouldn't be the worse of the two."

"And yet," Gansey concedes, scrubs a hand across his forehead. Blue pulls it away, doesn't lose the opportunity to kiss the knuckle of his thumb with the pad of her own.

"Look at you," she croons, letting his hand fall to his chest. "You've gone all pink." Her fingers come instead to cup the flush at his perfect, blue-blooded cheekbone, heat that they both know damn well isn't due in any part to his literal embarrassment of riches. The hitch in his breath is a warning. There's another when he turns his head, mouth parted like he means to graze the mound of her hand with his lips. Blue very nearly flinches away but he freezes before he gets too close and turns his face squarely to hers instead.

"Blue," he says, not very even at all.

"Gansey," she replies, made strong by the fire she holds under her hands.

These are the rules: talk about nothing. Talk about everything. Pick out shapes in the clouds and laugh at them as though they weren't your thoughts, crafted deliberate, to avoid showing the Cabeswater what you really dream. Keep your touches light. Keep your eyes clear. Pretend that you are neither one cursed.

The trick is in the way Blue sparks to life with every pass of Gansey's eyes on hers. The trick is in the sting of the grass below their legs, as sharp and near as teeth. The trick is in the question in every veil of a sentence that floats between them: how close? how much? how far until we kill each other?

The answer, as always: just a bit farther. Blue, frustrated, whines as she throws a leg over Gansey's hips to leverage herself over. It's easier not to look him in the eye when she knows in detail the way he gapes at the sight of her above him. Just the feel of his skin under her hands, stretching taut with ragged breaths, is enough to overwhelm. She pulls her hands away from his face (from his lips) to rest them on his chest instead, feels the stutter there as she grinds down against him, says his name when she digs her fingernails in. 

"Blue," he says in turn, clutching to her hips with the slightest hesitation; unsure, maybe, of whether to hold her down against him or to flip them over. He settles on resting them there, pressing so lightly to the bone that Blue swears and scrambles to get her shorts off so that Gansey can put his hands on her. 

She thinks about Gansey's hands a lot. Smooth where she is callused, never-worked-a-day-in-his-life hands, the elegant bend of his fingers around his pen as he spills his inelegant scrawl into the journal. The rasp of his fingernails against her thigh sometimes feels like the closest thing she's known to a kiss. The hard part is not to think of his mouth, especially not now, when the press of his thumb against her clit sets her body to thrumming, when his teeth bite into the fullness of his bottom lip with restraint, with want. Blue knows about want. Gansey slides a finger inside her and she keens, falling forward against him. 

"I wish," Gansey mumbles, his breath stirring the hair at her forehead, but they both know where that sentence ends. If they asked for such a simple, chaste thing, Cabeswater would give it to them; Blue would much rather they both walked out of here alive. To her comfort, Gansey redirects, says, "I want to watch you," and Blue shivers, his smart, smooth fingers bringing her to stillness. 

"Watch, then," she whispers, and reaches for his belt. 

There have to be rules; in the dream, in the quest, in the damn Pig. Blue knows it's only for their own good, knows that it's the only way to keep him. But she presses her cheek to his when he comes, with his ragged breath in her ear and her hand on his cock, and parts her lips anyway against the ghost of sensation. 

No one ever said she couldn't learn to cheat.


End file.
